Texas Coast Moringa

My wife and I like to cook. Naturally, as we have discovered moringa, we have tried to cook with it.

The Internets have a bunch of recipes featuring moringa powder, but we come at this from having moringa trees on our property. We have fresh leaves! How can we not make food with them?

This cookbook covers all the basics: breakfast, lunch, dinner, beverages, appetizers, salad, main courses, and dessert, of course! How in the world did we squeeze all that into 11 recipes??? Well, we tried really hard.

Each recipe features moringa and tells you how much moringa you are getting per serving. I mean, we do not cook with it because it tickles our tongue. We incorporate it into our diet for its health benefits. We want to know how much moringa we are putting into our system.

However, I hope this cookbook is only the beginning of our friendship. If you have moringa recipes—especially recipes featuring fresh leaves—please send me the recipe. We are interested in knowing more about this fascinating plant, and trying more recipes… In fact, I’m concocting something now (not in the book, but maybe later on the blog) for the flowers. If you have a good recipe, send it to recipes@texascoastmoringa.com.

Happy cooking!

What in the world is a moringa?

Hi, I’m Matt, a designer turned gardener. A year ago I entered a health crisis, and have not entirely emerged from that scary time, but I’ve passed through the “I-think-I-might-die-young” stage and have found a few practical ways to improve my gut. I feel like I have turned a corner. 

At the beginning of this journey, I already had a few random moringa trees, that I planted on a whim a few years ago. Well, during this health crisis they piqued my interest. Folks on the Internets advocate for them as being miracle trees. Well, I love trees in general, and to find a tree you can eat is amazing! The moringa tree is large vegetable. I have a few right now that are three times my height. 

Well, what about the tree can you eat? The leaves. I’ve heard the flowers are edible, but I haven’t tried them yet. The bean pods. I would not eat the roots, bark, or trunk without more research. I hear they may contain carcinogenic compounds… but nowadays what doesn’t?

What does it taste like? Well, I don’t know how the flowers taste, so let me try one. Mmmm…. WOW! It tastes fresh and floral, with a surprising sweet note and a spicy taste. I tried couple juvenile bean pods, but they were chewy. After they mature, you can cut them in sections, boil them, sauté them in spices, and scrape the soft innards from the hard pods. They taste downright amazing. The leaves… taste like grass. Spicy grass. Think bland horseradish… grass. Not unpleasant, but definitely bland. Believe me, you do not eat moringa leaves for the taste sensation! You eat it for your health.

So what about it is healthy? Well, that’s a whole nother kettle of beans. But I had to make this post first just in case people needed a no nonsense introduction to moringa. But let’s just say, I have spent the last couple months wading through claims not just on random websites, but also in peer-reviewed studies and well researched papers. I created several spreadsheets comparing moringa’s health benefits to other healthy foods, such as turmeric, walnuts, eggs, canned chili, and green beans. 

Folate! Moringa is a decent source of folate, otherwise known as vitamin B9. 

Here is one controversial thing that I found: You will find that the USDA does not list any vitamin E content for moringa. However, I’ve seen websites state (without attribution) that moringa contains 20x the amount of vitamin E than tofu. That’s a problem, and I mean to solve it. Someday.

I’m not going to tell you to subscribe or to leave me comments or do anything. If you do comment, I’m super interested in what you say about this. I’m in the midst of studying moringa and the moringa craze. Some claims do not seem to be supported by actual research, but that being said, moringa seems to be overall healthy. 

So…. my doctor told me to eat vegetables, and I got me a vegetable tree.